No, not me. This is someone important. Dr. Stefan Talmon, a German barrister and University Lecturer in Public International Law and Tutorial Fellow, St. Anne’s College, University of Oxford, will be speaking on October 18th at 12:00 pm in the Moot Court room at the BYU Law School on the topic of “The U.N. Security Council as a Global Legislator.” This lecture derives from his recent law review article The Security Council as World Legislature, American Journal of International Law 99 (2005), pp. 175-193. I will try to make it since this is one of my primary interests in the field of law and relates somewhat to my own law review comment about the countermajoritarian difficulty and the international criminal court (2003), in which I specifically examine the role of international tribunals as super-legislatures.

Dr. Talmon, for his part, does not “believe in theory for theory’s sake. In fact, theory, more often than not, not only fails to enhance the understanding of a problem but creates a tertium quid which stands, like a bank of fog on a still day, between the observer and the contours of the ground which call for investigation.” This is an interesting perspective, and one which I am eager to see him apply to the topic of international policy, adjudication, and legislation.

I have enabled Blogger’s word verification function to prevent the loads of comment spam that we have been getting here. Just go ahead and type your comments as usual using the bloggerhacks box at the bottom. When you click on post, it will divert you to the blogger comment screen so that you can type the word verification. After you have done so, your comment will appear. One extra but uncomplicated step.

Thanks to all who comment and we look forward to reading more from you in the future.

I have followed the editorial writings of the Dutch political commentator Leon de Winter with much interest over the last few years (since about 2001). So I was very pleased to see that he had begun blogging his ideas on his new blog, The Free West, on a blog platform that is hosted by Die Welt, one of Germany’s premiere newspapers. Check out the announcement of de Winter’s blog at Die Welt for an idea of what de Winter’s wants to do with his blog and for his explanation for why he wishes to blog in English, even though he is Dutch and writing for a German newspaper. The introductory post new journalism is interesting and the comments quickly turned into a fight about why de Winters is writing his blog in English even though it is hosted at a top German newspaper. Comment 25 on that thread is very insightful. . . .

If everything went as planned and Jordan was able to get his caseload in order, then he is out of the office right now as part of a stake group that has gone from Dallas to the areas of devastation from Katrina to help out in any way needed. He said it would most likely be clean-up and that they will be “roughing” it, i.e. camping somewhere near where they are helping. Thousands of Latter-day Saints from Texas have participated in this service and continue to do so. I believe that there were approximately 7,000 members from Texas doing this last weekend, although that number is unverified.

It was fun to see an LDS guy on the Late Show with David Letterman last night. In “show and tell,” Sean from BYU studying exercise science told how he lived for two years in Mongolia (wonder what he was doing there?) and showed us his C+ rendition of Mongolian throat singing. Good job Sean. Way to represent–I must admit, you made BYU look good!